


Fünfundvierzig Flügelpaare

by posingasme



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Smith/Wesson, Angel Castiel, Angel Wings, Deutsch | German, Episode: s04e17 It's a Terrible Life, Gen, Languages, Men of Letters, Sam Does Research, Witch Curses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-08
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-03-29 14:37:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3899914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/posingasme/pseuds/posingasme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Story is in English with sputterings of poor beginners' German.]</p><p>Sam Winchester and Sam Wesson each must learn as much about the German language as possible. For one, failure will mean death, and for the other, success will mean life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fünfundvierzig Flügelpaare

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wings90](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wings90/gifts).



> Wings90 is studying German, and I wanted to send some encouragement. I took six years of German, but that was many, many years ago, and I've studied Spanish and Arabic since, along with my Slovak and Russian. So keep in mind that Sam and Sam are beginners, and forgive me my poor grammar. That goes for my English too. Natürlich.

Sam Wesson was doing everything he could do to keep his eyes open. The coffee was just not working anymore. _Kaffee. Nutzlos. Nichtsnutzig._

 _Nicht. Nacht_. Nachos.

Now he was getting giddy. Yes, it was night. Yes, he was hungry. That was not going to keep him from studying for this test. He was changing his life with this proficiency exam, and he was not about to let sleep deprivation deny him that.

***

Sam Winchester was doing everything he could do to keep his eyes open. The coffee was just not working anymore. _Kaffee. Nutzlos. Nichtsnutzig._

 _Nicht_. "Nacht."

"Nachos?"

His concentration snapped. "Yes, Dean! Because the most likely thing an ancient scroll about dark magic from the Black Forest would be about is a snack created in northern Mexico in the twentieth century!!"

His brother was staring at him when he looked up. Staring at him...and holding a plate of nachos. "Dude."

"Oh." Sam dropped his pen and rubbed his eyes. "Sorry. I've been staring at this thing too long. I thought...God, I'm starved. You're the best brother ever. These look amazing."

"Dude, how much coffee have you had?"

"Not enough," he muttered through his first bite. "Go. Get coffee. This thing's got to be translated tonight if we have a shot of breaking that hex." _Hexe_ _magische_. Or was it _magie_? And that was probably redundant anyway. "Geben Sie mir Kaffee."

Dean shook his head. "I'm going to assume you're asking for more coffee, and the answer is no. Eat. Hydrate. Proteinate. Then we'll talk about more caffeine."

 _Essen_ _. Trinken. Übersetzen_.

***

"Eat. Drink. Study some more German."

"Deutsche."

Dean Smith laughed quietly. "Yeah, that. Why couldn't you take French like a normal person? I could have helped you."

 _Ich hätte_ _Ihnen geholfen_.

Was that even the right tense for that? Wesson didn't know.

Smith sighed. "Here's the part where you say, it's okay, Dean. You're helping by providing moral support and food."

Wesson looked up. "Did you know there are thirty-two ways to say _the_ or _a_?"

He received a low whistle, then Smith bit into his own sandwich and gestured toward Wesson's. "Well, at least they don't add a bunch of unnecessary vowels to the ends of words."

"No, but they string adjectives together like crazy." _Verrückt_. Was there another word for that? He dropped his forehead to the table. "Ich werde meine Prüfung zum Scheitern verurteilt."

"I can't even tell if that was German or just you whining incoherently."

"Beide."

***

"Okay, here's something. A witch's hex can live on after her death." _Ihr Tod_.

"But only if she cursed an object, right?"

"Not necessarily." _Nicht unbedingt_? Dammit, German sucked. This stupid scroll couldn't have been from Lorraine or someplace? Sam had studied a lot of languages. German just didn't match up with the way his brain had been trained. He had cut his teeth on Latin. All things Germanic, even English sometimes, were strange to him. Romance languages flowed through his brain the way languages should. But then Bobby might have felt that way about Japanese.

"Sam? Care to share more?"

 _Mehr_.

"More. Um...oh. Yeah, the hex can outlive the Hexe if she imbued it with a bit of her own soul." _Seele_. The word had to be soul. It was scratched up, but he thought he could make it out. "Dammit, it would help if this thing weren't falling apart in my hands."

"You can't just take a photo and look at it on your computer?"

Sam smiled, but it was more like a wince. "Oh no. That would be entirely too easy. This thing has a warning right up top. Any attempt to reproduce its teachings will result in its structure withering completely. For all I know, snapping a picture qualifies as trying to reproduce it."

"Hate witches, man."

"Ja."

***

Smith was dozing on the couch. He was a good guy. _Er war ein guter_ _Mann_. He had crashed at Wesson's place just to be company while Wesson fretted about his exam. The older man startled awake when Wesson sighed in frustration a bit louder than he meant to.

"What's wrong, man?" he murmured sleepily, then yawned through Wesson's response.

"Nothing. I'm sorry. I just...it's stupid." _Es ist dumm_.

"What?" _Was_?

"I'm so tired, and I can't read my own handwriting. I took notes in class, but now..."

"Should have typed them while you still remembered it all."

 _Sie sollten_. "I know that now, Stanford boy," he snapped.

"Sam, you gotta sleep, man." _Sie_ _haben in den Schlaf bekam_. Or was it...

"Skipping gerunds. They're easy. Sie sind einfach."

"Would you stop doing that?"

***

"Stop doing what?"

"Repeating half your words in German. It's creeping me out."

Sam shrugged. "Dean, I haven't slept in three days, except that half hour nap I caught when I passed out at breakfast and the waitress nearly called for an ambulance." _Das Frühstück war so lange her_. "So just be glad Lucifer isn't playing backup."

"Dude, you gotta sleep, man."

Sam frowned. "I'm skipping this bit. As far as I can tell, it's just babble about preparing a container for volatile spell components."

"Get to the part about how we kill a dead witch deader."

The younger man lifted his eyes to look at Dean as though he were an idiot. "That's not even a word in English, let alone Old High German."

"Old what now?"

 _Alt. Völlig zu alt_. "The parts of this scroll that date back the furthest are in Old High German. The more recent additions are mostly more modern German."

"Remind me again why we didn't just go to somebody who actually reads German?"

Sam scrawled out another note on his paper. _Dämon? Hölle_. Oh. Hell. Right.

"Sammy?"

"Hm? Because we can't take an artifact like this to anyone, Dean. If someone reads the thing aloud, it will invoke so much demonic energy, that demon from the plane crashes all those years ago will start to look like a friendly flight attendant."

 _Flugzeug Dämon_. Why did he even know these words?

***

Smith stretched his legs while he listened to Wesson chant irregular verb conjugations. "Tell me again why you're here with me instead of studying with somebody who knows German?"

"I like you better."

"Better than who?"

"Better than anyone. You fought a ghost with me, dude."

_Geistergeschäftsmann. Geist eines verärgerten Geschäftsmann._

Why did he even know the words for that?

Smith seemed oddly pleased with this statement. "Right? So I keep waiting for you to tell me what this has to do with all that. Because it obviously does."

Wesson smiled tightly. He hadn't been ready to talk to Smith about this yet, but...why not?

"Die mit Buchstaben Männer. Männer der Spiralen. Neunzig Flügel."

"Okay, in English, please."

Wesson grinned at him.

***

"Okay, in English, jackass."

Sam glared at him. "That was English."

Dean looked like he was just about done. "Sam. No. It wasn't. No more coffee. And I'm throwing your ass into a bed in twenty minutes whether you're done or not.

His brother thought back. Oh. _Fünfundvierzig Flügelpaare_. That _had_ been in German. "Forty-five pairs of wings."

"Okay, that was in English. But I still don't know what it means."

***

"Forty-Five Pairs of Wings. It's a chapter of a secret society called the Lettered Men, the Men of the Books, the Men of Scrolls. They are all over the world, but this chapter is based in Munich. They send operatives all over, to research and document the work of hunters." _Jäger_.

"What...?"

Wesson nodded. "So they take down the information, the stories and the new lore, to correct myths about what works and what doesn't against certain monsters, and they assist hunters when they need an expert."

Smith nodded. "Wow. That's awesome."

"They recruited us."

Green eyes flashed in confusion. "Wait. What? Us?"

"They always work in pairs. Forty-five pairs, sent all over the world to document and assist with hunts. Their pair of English speaking operatives just retired back to the home base in Munich. So they needed another. And those guys retiring? They were sniffing around when we iced that ghost. They documented it, and reported back that we had a lot of potential. That we were naturals. So they approached me."

***

"You! Why you?"

Sam rolled his eyes. He felt like he was doing that a lot. It was beginning to hurt his head. "Because I'm the one who got hexed, dumbass. Look, it's simple. We need feathers. Castiel's buddies have feathers. I do the ritual and we all go out for burgers."

"But the ritual can kill you."

 _Es kann mich töten_. "Sure. But only if I translated wrong."

Dean threw his hands in the air. "You don't read German!"

"I've been reading German for three days!" Sam pointed out. "Castiel, I'm praying that you can help me. I need feathers from ninety wings."

"Is that ninety separate angels," the gruff voice asked behind them, nearly knocking Dean off his seat, "or forty-five pairs of wings?"

Sam smiled as Dean began cursing. "I think you enjoy scaring the crap out of him, don't you?"

Castiel narrowed his eyes at the older hunter. "Why would I take pleasure in Dean's discomfort?" he asked. Then he gave a smirk to Sam.

The younger man laughed. "Right. Okay, so I think it is forty-five pairs."

"Cas, can you read this? Can you check his translations? It would suck monkey balls if he screwed this up because he's using angel feathers instead of fish scales or something."

Castiel sighed and glanced over Sam's shoulder. "I can't read this, Dean."

Sam looked pointedly at his brother. "I told you. He reads it and it self-destructs."

While Dean was busy muttering about all the different spells weaved into the scroll by a paranoid witch, Sam turned back to Castiel.

"So can you get them?"

***

"It won't be easy. But it's the chance to do something really incredible."

Smith shook his head. "You agreed to this, ran out and took a bunch of classes in German, and you're taking an exam to prove to them you know enough of their language to get started, all without talking to me first?"

Wesson sighed. He swallowed hard and looked at his friend. "Dean, I'm doing this. With or without you. But I know you want it too. You said you wouldn't go on the road with me because you wanted health and dental. Well, these guys pay for everything. Everything. They give you credit cards with no limit, and you just charge as you go, and they don't ask questions and the bill goes to them. As long as you're doing the job and reporting in weekly, they let you do your thing. And they give you phones that someone is always monitoring in case you get into trouble. Dean, this is it. This is what we want!" He took a deep breath. "This is what I want. I take the exam tomorrow, and if I pass, I'm going for my induction. They want us as a pair. Only one of the two of us needed to prove we could understand enough German to get started. I'm going to do this. And I want you to do it too."

***

"I have them."

Dean choked on his beer. "Dude!"

Sam smirked. "Yeah?"

Castiel nodded. He was holding a small wooden box with sigils on it. "Ninety feathers collected from forty-five angels. Some even gave voluntarily."

Sam cringed. "Thanks, Cas." _Vielen Dank._

"Of course. Don't mispronounce anything," he suggested. Then he patted Sam on the arm and backed away.

"Right. Time to get dehexed."

The witch's hex had the nasty effect of making Sam a beacon for all things fanged and hungry. _Ein_ _Leuchtfeuer_ to everything in the world that liked to snack on humans. Since the bitch had managed to harness soul magic, it was nearly impossible to break. But Dean had managed to beat the existence and location of this scroll out of one of Crowley's mid-level managers, and they had negotiated with his majesty to acquire it. Not Dean's favorite day at work, but there really were very few good days, so he wasn't complaining, not if this saved Sam.

"Here goes everything," Sam muttered. _Hier geht alles_. 

***

Smith's brain- _sein Gehirn_ -was whirring. Wesson could see it in his eyes. But there was something else creeping onto his face. _Ein Lächeln_.

Wesson smiled back. "I knew it."

"I didn't say I would."

A wave of relief washed through him. "You're going to do it."

"Okay, Sam. You pass this test first. That's the next step, right?"

"Richtig."

Smith was nodding, and now he was wide awake, quizzing Wesson relentlessly and asking him to explain grammatical structure. This was the happiest Wesson could ever remember being. They were going to do this.

They were going to be the forty-fifth pair.

***

Castiel squinted at Sam thoughtfully.

"Cas?" Dean demanded in a voice both gruff and shrill. "He do it? Did it work?"

Sam shrugged. "I don't feel different. Magic this powerful...I should have felt something, right?"

"You are no longer covered head to toe with a green aura. I suspect that is a good sign."

Sam and Dean sighed together.

"Sam, it would be best for my relations with other celestials if I never had to steal feathers from forty-four of them again."

"Forty-four?" Dean shouted. "It was supposed to be-"

Castiel turned to him. "I have wings too, Dean. The eighty-ninth and ninetieth were from each of my wings."

Sam smiled, and reached out to hug their angel. "Thanks, Cas. Vielen dank."

"Anything you need, Sam. Natürlich."

***

Smith was waiting outside, sipping a latte when Wesson emerged from the nondescript brick building, exhausted down to his core. Smith gazed at him through expensive sunglasses. "So? You pass?"

Wesson gave him an enormous grin, and Smith smiled happily. "Natürlich."

**Author's Note:**

> Viel Glück, Wings90/45Pairs!
> 
> ~Posing


End file.
